As if the world needed any MORE evidence of my complete dorkiness…I’m having a MonkeyThon!
Yes, folks, the final chapter of Telltale Games’ “Tales of Monkey Island” is coming out on Tuesday, and in order to prepare, I will spend the weekend replaying through ALL THE MONKEY ISLAND GAMES. (Yes, even “Escape from Monkey Island”. It may be the installment I’m least crazy about, but it’s still an official game, and despite the infuriating interface and plot holes you could fight a cow through, there’s still a lot to enjoy in it.)
So, beginning at 5:30 PM this evening, I will begin playing “The Secret of Monkey Island”. Once I finish, I will move onto “LeChuck’s Revenge”, followed by “Curse”, then “Escape”, and finally, all four currently-released chapters of “Tales”. Obviously, I won’t finish all in one night; I’ll play until I get tired, then in the morning I’ll continue where I left off, etc. I’ll play all weekend if necessary!
Given the option, I’ll be playing the hard version of each game. Furthermore, I will NOT be consulting any online hint guides or walkthroughs. In most cases, I will probably remember the puzzle solutions from my last playthroughs, but if I stumble across a puzzle I’ve forgotten (most likely in “Escape”, which I’ve played least-recently), I’ll just stare at it until I figure it out. Hence the potential taking-all-weekend.
And in case there were any lingering doubts about my insanity (or, for that matter, my inanity), I will naturally be tweeting my thoughts and observations as I play through the games, tagging each tweet #MonkeyThon09, so YOU can read just how frustrated I am when I can’t find a pirate who knows the last insult swordfighting comeback!
I encourage other Monkey Island fans to participate in the MonkeyThon! There are only three requirements:
1. All of the Monkey Island games
2. A Twitter account
3. Absolutely no life to speak of.
The good news is, according to my observations, requirements 2 and 3 often go hand-in-hand! So please, play along, and tell us what YOU love (and hate) about each game as you revisit it!
Even if you don’t own ALL the games, I still encourage you to replay the ones you do have in anticipation for the “Tales” conclusion. How ELSE are we supposed to raise our fanboy expectations to a level where they can never be satisfied?
I hope those of you who are almost as dorky as I am will enjoy joining me for MonkeyThon. I hope this weekend, we can all look toward the future, by playing LucasArts games from the past.
Which Monkey Island version?
Did you play the original Monkey Island or the one with new graphics recently published? Just in case you’re already finished… 🙂
Re: Which Monkey Island version?
I played the original, mainly because ScummVM runs more smoothly on my MacBook than Crossover does, so I wanted to limit my use of CrossOver to the “Tales” episodes. I pulled out my really crappy old laptop for “Escape”. I’m sure there’s some sort of poetic justice there.
However, I did enjoy the Special Edition. Some of the voices were weird, and I wish the animation was smoother, but overall I thought it was pretty cool-looking. I know not everybody’s crazy about Guybrush’s SE design, but it doesn’t bug me that much, and the backgrounds look like something out of a high-quality children’s picture book.
My attempt at the marathon is done and my spur-of-the-moment thoughts are all on Twitter; I’ll be writing a slightly-better-thought-out blog post on the subject shortly. If you’re looking for a still-ongoing MonkeyThon to follow, these guys just started their attempts this morning–with streaming video! http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13811
Heh, I’m not going to be playing them all (since the last part comes out tomorrow) but I did play thought MI1: SE the other day and have been playing MI2 today =)
You could always play them all AFTER the last part comes out…so it’s less of an “anticipation for the finale” thing and more of a “let’s look back at the WHOLE series” thing. 😀
Of course, that means spending the middle of the week doing nothing but playing computer games. This is why I chose to do it over a weekend where I had very little scheduled, although even then I had to take a few breaks for that pesky “reality” thing.
True, true. I’d like to finish MI2 tonight though, I just got the first piece of the map, woo!
And lucky me, I have nothing planed during the nights this week, so that’s a go 😉